Sonnets

what true love really is. Love is something no one can really answer to why it exists. Both of Shakespeare’s sonnets are about love, but whether it’s about real love is the question. Romeo and Juliet’s sonnet is about “love at first sight,” while “Sonnet 130” is whole other story. Unlike the sonnet in act 1, scene 5, the way Shakespeare describes his love in “Sonnet 130,” is true. In “Sonnet 130,” Shakespeare is describing his love with insults. Shakespeare is a creative writer, he uses a…

Love Sonnets or a Work of Feminism? Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese is a collection of poems of a personal telling of her love for Robert Browning. In the 19th century, women were not given the same rights or treated the same as men. This set of poems was a woman confessing her love for a man, rather than a man confessing his love for a woman, which was very different from the usual writing of the time. Sonnets are a form of poetry used for love, usually a man…

One of his poems “Love Sonnet XVII” was written about his deep love for someone. In the poem, he explains his love by using many similes and examples of imagery. For example, the poem starts out by saying “I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz or the arrow of…

use of figurative language adds deeper meaning to the writing in sonnets and other form of poetry and this is continuously demonstrated throughout Shakespeare’s work. As love is the central theme of most of Shakespeare’s sonnets, his writing exudes many tones, including passion, disgust, anger and hope. Seemingly similar in writing form and word use, Sonnet 130 and Sonnet 30 differ in themes, tone and situation. To begin with, Sonnet 130 demonstrates the relationship the speaker has with his…

Sonnet 130 Have you ever read a poem and did not understand it, even after reading it over and over again? Authors use things such as figurative language in order for you to have to think to figure out the poem is saying. Knowing what figurative language is may help you figure out the poem. Figurative language is “used with a meaning that is different from the basic meaning and that expresses an idea in an interesting way by using language that usually describes something else.” (Merriam…

When thinking of sonnets,the main themes that are considered are expressing love and unrequited love. Most sonnets compare the person of affection with nature, specifically flora and the sky. Shakespeare, however, chooses to honor his subjects with more abstract comparisons and goes as far as to mock the typical sonnet. Sonnets 18 and 130 are prime examples of Shakespeare’s perception of sonnets commonly written in his time. The mockery is expressed through the form of these sonnets using common…

It’s a Sonnet” chapter in How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster explains how a sonnet’s structure relates directly to the meaning and the purpose of the sonnet itself. “Sonnet 2” can be analyzed in such a manner, and its meaning and structure are very closely intertwined. The sonnet itself is structured as an English sonnet in iambic pentameter and follows the rhyme scheme of ababcdcdefefgg. The sonnet is broken into three quatrains and a couplet. The meaning of English sonnets can…

Canzoniere is a volume of 365 sonnets and songs that explore the poet’s desire for a woman who is beautiful but chaste, and therefore unattainable. The speaker’s inability to attain the woman’s love is a common thread weaving throughout these sonnets and songs and gave rise to the concept of Petrarchan love, a theme that many poets have since emulated. Sir Thomas Wyatt’s sonnet Whoso List to Hunt and Sonnet 67 by Edmund Spenser are adaptations of Petrarch’s Canzoniere sonnet, Rima 190, Una…

as well as sonnets with dialogue such as “The Nymph’s Reply”, a parody to “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” written by Christopher Marlowe. William Shakespeare, the writer of 154 sonnets but most widely known for his work by the name of Romeo and Juliet, has made his mark on British poetry during the Elizabethan Age/ Renaissance. The two British sonnets being compared and or contrasted are sonnet I (one) and sonnet XXIV (twenty- four) and they will be compared by the type of sonnet, theme,…

Sonnet VI Michael Drayton’s sonnet number six describes a setting of the world where many women paint the streets. Drayton in line 1 explains that these women are “paltry, foolish, painted things” describing them as meager or of no importance where as they try to by foolishly painting themselves with make-up like children playing adults for a day. These women surround coaches on the streets soon to be forgotten due to the fact that no poet has ever written about them in a sense that gives a…